Saturday, July 16, 2005

Plot to Assassinate Kocharian Uncovered?

The Noyan Tapan news agency, as distributed by Groong, reports that Gagik Grigoryan faces charges under Articles 38, 35 and 305 of the Criminal Code of the republic of Armenia. His crime? He was apparently the mastermind of a plan to assassinate the two highest ranking officials in the country.

Court hearings into an attempt to kill the Armenian president [Robert Kocharyan] and the defence minister [Serzh Sarkisyan] will start on 25 July, Noyan Tapan learnt today from the office of Pargev Oganyan, a judge of the first instance court of Yerevan's Kentron and Nork Marash communities who will preside over the case.

Perhaps as testimony to the state of the media in Armenia, I can't remember any news reports on this quite headline making story before. I remember something about a hoax bomb phone call last month but not a fully-fledged plan to assassinate Kocharian and Sarkisian. If anyone knows more details please post them in the comments section.

Actually, I have to admit that Noyan Tapan are not a bad news agency. Just a pity that they're a subscription only service although during the 2003 Presidential Elections in Armenia they made all their content publicly available for free. That was apparently in the interest of providing information to everyone on that important event and I have to admit, I found their coverage the best.